


A Heart-Shaped Sign

by onstraysod



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Angst, Female Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 05:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4654149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months after returning to England, Arabella Strange has a comfortable home and the companionship of her friends Emma Pole and Flora Greysteel to cheer her. But what she desires most is some sign that her husband has not forgotten her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart-Shaped Sign

**Author's Note:**

> For quantumtardis, who requested post-book/series Arabella. I hope you like it.

The days of most ladies were divided between the tasks inherent to the running of a household: the management of servants, the tutoring of children not yet old enough to require governesses, the planning of menus, the answering of letters, the balancing of accounts, and the returning of social calls.

Arabella Strange's days, however, were divided among mirrors and basins of water, with long, interminable stretches of waiting in between. At least four times a day - after waking in the morning, before luncheon, at tea time, and again before she retired for the night - she used the spell John Childermass had taught her to divide the dish of water into quarters and search each square delineated by gold-gleaming lines for any sign of her husband. In England, in Wales, in Scotland, in Italy. And more frequently during the day she went to stand in front of a mirror - any of the mirrors in the house would do - where she would murmur a few words of longing that were like an incantation, a few pleading words that served as a prayer or a spell, hoping to be rewarded by the image of her husband's face. Everyday she repeated these tasks, the way other women did their mending in the strong light just after breakfast or went around to their neighbor's houses in the early afternoon, and the closing of each day brought her the same result. Disappointment, and an ever-deepening sense of loss.

It had been three months since her return to England from Italy in company with Emma Pole and the Greysteel family. Knowing how painful the return would be Arabella's friends had tried to persuade her to remain in Italy a little longer, but Arabella had been adamant about the need to return. As pleasant as Italy was, as much as its mild clime and bright sunshine cheered her - as much as anything could cheer her - England was where her husband had disappeared, and so it was England where she needed to be. But she had no desire to make her residence in London or Shropshire again. Her houses in both places had vanished along with her husband, and though she would always have a home with her brother in Great Hitherden, he was married now and Arabella had no wish to disrupt his domestic arrangements. Offers of other houses - even one from the Duke of Wellington - were politely refused. There was somewhere else Arabella needed to be.

There were, to her mind, two strong inducements for taking the house near York. First was its nearness to Hurtfew Abbey - or, rather, the lands where Hurtfew Abbey had sat before the Pillar of Darkness had wrapped it up in its black skirts and carried it to Other Lands. If Jonathan and Norrell were able to vanquish the enchantment that held them, surely they would return to the grounds of Hurtfew first and Arabella, dwelling near at hand, would more speedily learn of their escape. The second reason for her choice was that York was, arguably, the center of English magic and magical scholarship. Here was the reformed York Society of Magicians and, not far away, John Segundus's school for magicians; here was the King's own country and his long-hidden Book. If a way to rescue Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell was to be discovered anywhere, surely it would be in York, and Arabella was determined to stay close enough to make certain that the primary focus of all these new magicians was the return of her husband and his tutor.

So Lady Pole and Flora Greysteel had accompanied her to Yorkshire, to a large, well-furnished cottage halfway between York and Starecross with a park of birch and copper beeches and a large, well-tended garden. For both Emma - blessed with her own considerable fortune and eager to make a life for herself apart from her husband - and Flora, who had family not terribly distant in Derbyshire, felt that no place in England had a greater claim upon their affections than wherever Arabella Strange, their sister in magical suffering, decided to reside. And like Arabella, both Emma and Flora refused to consent to the resurrection of English magic being overseen and directed solely by men. They were all three united in a determination that never again should women be made the playthings of magicians, traded and sold and bartered away like commodities, like rugs in a foreign marketplace; women should be educated in magic, able to defend themselves against its use, and able to use it for their own good and protection. Due perhaps to the respect and awe their previous experiences incurred in all who were interested in magic - and the subtle air of enchantment or magical taint, whether real or imagined, that still clung to all three of them - the women encountered little resistance to their goals. And so their time was occupied not only with the establishment of their household and all the little changes of wallpaper and draperies that accompany the taking of a new home, but also with attending meetings of the York Society, visiting the fledgling school at Starecross, and studying whatever magical texts could be procured by their friends.

And their friends were many. Carriages were forever coming up the long drive from the York road, bringing guests who might remain for the afternoon, or for the night, or for a fortnight's stay. Flora Greysteel's father and aunt were often there, and Henry Woodhope and his new bride had already paid two visits, and Mrs. Wintertowne was a frequent guest, dispensing advice on furnishings and food and any other subject that might be broached, as well as holding forth in consternation on the subject of magic and all magicians. Sir Walter had come and walked in the garden with Emma for some time and, though he did not stay even a night, it seemed to Arabella and Flora that he had come to some kind of harmonious understanding with his wife, for he left with a smile and warm wishes for their success and happiness in Yorkshire. John Segundus was perhaps their most frequent visitor, along with Mr. Honeyfoot who brought his wife and daughters, and the warmest of friendships sprang up almost immediately amid all these ladies. And there were two other visitors as well, the strangest of the lot: two men who rode to the cottage on horseback, one on a great black Yorkshire coach horse, the other on a skinny, reddish gelding. One of the men was dark: his clothes, his hair, his piercing glance; while the other was like a scarecrow left too long to the whims of the weather. A lean, crooked sapling of a man, with tattered clothes and blue markings on his skin, he would jump from the saddle and dance about, laughing and singing of lonely moors and ravens.

It had taken Emma Pole some time to warm to the presence of John Childermass, but Arabella had no such qualms. She understood now, having been informed of all that had passed during her enchantment by John Segundus, the reason Childermass had arranged for Lady Pole to be brought to Starecross and how he too had been deceived and misled by Norrell. Arabella knew that Childermass had always respected her husband, that his own inclinations about the proper focus of magic were closer to Jonathan's own than to Norrell's, and so she had immediately recognized that in Childermass she had a true ally in focusing the efforts of all magicians upon freeing her husband and Norrell. Yet nonetheless she could not understand Childermass's reverence for John Uskglass, and so she had told him in a moment of frustration. "I despise your king!" she had snapped when Childermass had mentioned Uskglass's Book, gesturing to where Vinculus lounged on a nearby sopha eating a piece of strawberry torte and winking at Flora, who only encouraged his antics with her scarcely-contained laughter.

Childermass had looked at Arabella with some surprise. "It is his book, madam, that may hold the key to freeing your husband."

"And it is his spell that holds my husband in thrall!" she had cried. "Did not Vinculus say so just the other day, that all of this is John Uskglass's doing? It may have been that-- that horrid creature who created the Pillar, but it is your king who keeps it in place and has spirited it away to heaven knows where! Tell me, John Childermass," and Arabella had found that tears were suddenly burning in the corners of her eyes and her fists were clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingernails were cutting half moons into the flesh of her palms, "how am I supposed to respect a king who has stolen away my husband? How am I supposed to feel anything but hatred for a man who has taken away my world, my life?"

Emma and Flora had rushed to comfort her when she had left the room weeping, and Childermass had found her later when she was more calm and offered her what consolation and hope he could. But more and more frequently the words of her friends had no power to alleviate Arabella's suffering. All their conjectures were nothing but guesses, speculations: the empty speech of people who knew nothing, who groped around in the darkness. Had she and Emma and Flora, as women, been the playthings of magicians? Now, Arabella realized, they were all playthings, men and women alike: chess pieces, mere toys, moved about on an invisible board by the Raven King, picked up and put down on a whim and scattered with the sweep of his hand for amusement. Compared to the power and knowledge of the Black King, Childermass and Segundus and Vinculus with his unreadable book were like children pretending to adulthood, scrabbling about in clothes too big for them, unable to understand the roles they were supposed to be acting out. When one of them offered her a theory about where Jonathan was, or how he might be fetched back again, it rang hollow in her ears. Everyday she looked for hope and found less of it than she'd managed to scrape together the day before.

So she spent the hours from morning to evening: rising from a dream about Jonathan to look into the water; putting down her book or her needlework or her pen from time to time throughout the day to seek out the nearest mirror. And that Wednesday in early autumn was no exception. It was quieter than usual in the cottage for they had no guests, and the only voices to be heard aside from her own and Emma's and Flora's were those of their few servants: the cook, Mary - who had rejoined her mistress with much rejoicing - and Davey, who had followed Mary back to Yorkshire and to whom he was now engaged to be wed. A trunk had come in the morning for Arabella, packed with some of her clothes and other belongings that Henry had taken from Ashfair before its disappearance, and she had gone through it with trembling hands, every article reminding her of moments from her life before _the fairy_ , before _the Darkness_. They were not important moments, just little everyday incidents: memories of upbraiding Jonathan for his use of a foul oath when he upset a pitcher of cream on the table, and how her disapprobation had dissolved into laughter at the look he'd given her; that evening when he'd impersonated Drawlight and she had snorted in a most unladylike manner and tossed a pillow at his head. The way he'd toyed with the laces of one gown, first in an abstracted manner, then - seeing her watching him - with a wicked grin on his lips, a naughty sparkle in his eyes. Arabella had put all of the clothes and other items away except for a white pinafore with pockets she'd often worn around the house in Soho-square; for reasons more practical than sentimental she donned this over her lavender gown and went about the business of her day.

Which business was, of course, gazing into a basin of water, staring into any number of mirrors.

She was standing in front of a large, gilt-framed mirror in the hall that afternoon when Emma came up beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. Arabella jumped at the touch and came suddenly back to her surroundings.

"How long have I been standing here?" she asked.

"Twenty minutes or so. Come." Emma gave her arm a gentle squeeze. "Let us have some tea. We can play a game of piquet, or you can read to me from Ms. Austen's latest book. Mrs. Honeyfoot brought us a copy yesterday."

Arabella sighed and, reaching out, drew a little circle on the glass with her finger. "I do not feel much inclined to read about lovers. Give me a few minutes more, my dear."

"No." Emma's tone was stern and Arabella looked at her in surprise. "I do not mean to sound cruel or hard-hearted, but what I say I say for your own good." Emma took Arabella's hands, held them firmly. "You must not torment yourself like this. It is fine, sometimes, but to do it so frequently... Flora and I worry for you. You are so pale and drawn, we fear for your health."

"I am perfectly healthy," Arabella said, snatching her hands away and facing the mirror again. "And besides, I have seen you staring into mirrors too from time to time, and it is not to see if your hair is still in place."

Emma sighed, then laughed rather ruefully. "No, I am afraid I have lost much of my vanity. Death will have that effect on a person, I suppose." She hesitated, glancing at the mirror, then said: "You are right. I look, once and awhile. I thought that perhaps - I thought that Stephen might try to contact me sometime. I don't know why I supposed it would be through a mirror, except--" She shrugged. "Perhaps he has more important things to do than worry about me anymore."

"Do you think-- do you think they forget about us, in the Other Lands?" Arabella's gaze rested on Emma's face, her eyes widening suddenly as an alarming thought rose up in her mind. "Do you think we are lost to them, driven from their minds after a time-- the way that I forgot about Jonathan--"

"No." Emma seized Arabella's shoulders, gave her the tiniest, gentlest of shakes. "No, you must not think that! Your memories were purposefully stolen from you, and yet still you regained them. No, they have not forgotten us, nor will they ever. That is the cruelty of the Other Lands, to remember what you have left behind. Your experience there was not like mine, but you must believe me: I know. Yet for us, that cruelty-- the remembering? For us it shall prove a blessing in the end."

Arabella nodded. She reached for Emma's hand on her shoulder and held it. "No, you are right. I am sure that Jonathan has not forgotten. Though why, if he has not--" She looked into the mirror again, seeing only her's and Emma's faces, her own dark eyes filled still with the lingering traces of fear. "Why has he not sought for me?" 

"Come." Emma pulled at Arabella's arm, harder now. "Come into the parlour with me, or - better yet - go outside for a walk in the garden. Flora is out there, she would be so happy for you to join her. See - it is a beautiful day." She gestured towards the nearest window where the afternoon sunlight glinted merrily off the glass. "The fresh air and exercise would do you good. Will you do that, for me?"

Arabella smiled, though she felt little inclined to. "Yes, I will go into the garden. If only to please you, my dearest."

Emma's relief showed in her face. "Thank you." And she kissed Arabella on the cheek.

Flora was among the rosebushes, snipping off a few late blossoms for the vase they always kept fresh on the dining room table. She looked up and beamed to see Arabella approaching. "I'm so glad you've come outside! Isn't it a lovely afternoon? I was just thinking we should all go for a stroll through the park."

Arabella glanced back at the cottage. The grounds were large and such a walk would take time, time during which she might miss a glimmer on the surface of the water, the sudden movement of a familiar figure in the glass. "I could manage a turn through the garden, if that might suffice?"

Flora nodded and looped her arm through Arabella's. They took to the gravel path that wound around the lavender plants, the aquilegia and honeysuckle, the rosemary, all past the time of their blooming but still lovely and with leaves fragrant in the mild afternoon air. Flora talked cheerfully of a hat she had seen in the milliner's on their last trip to York; of a little spaniel pup her aunt had just been given by a friend, and the names Flora had suggested for it; of the pretty watercolor the youngest Miss Honeyfoot had just completed. Arabella smiled, and patted Flora's arm from time to time, and even laughed quietly in the places she was supposed to: but she heard very little of her friend’s conversation. There was a sky lark, sitting in the branches of some nearby tree, and the notes of its song entered Arabella's ears and pierced her like tiny needles.

Flora was just speaking of plans she had made with Emma for a picnic with all their friends when she turned and saw that Arabella was weeping. "Oh, my dear!" she cried in horror. "Oh, I've said something to upset you!"

To Flora's astonishment, this caused Arabella to laugh. "No. No, it is nothing you have said." She wiped at her cheeks with her fingers; to little effect, for the tears kept falling. "I am being ridiculous! No, it is that bird!" She gestured towards the nearest oak, not even certain if that was where the creature perched. "Jonathan - Jonathan could be so foolish sometimes. He did it to amuse me, though I should not-- I should not have encouraged him. Before we were married, we used to walk together sometimes in the churchyard at Clunbury, when Henry was the curate there. There were often birds roosting in the trees and Jonathan would imitate their songs - he could do it so very well, I sometimes could not distinguish between him and the real thing. He would do it sometimes outside my window at the rectory." Arabella smiled. "The call he did best was the lark."

Flora glanced up at the branches of the tree as if she half expected to see Jonathan Strange sitting there, a mischievous crooked grin on his face, long legs dangling over a limb. "Should I-- I can scare it away--"

"No! Leave it be. I am sorry for my tears. I rather like hearing it." Having no handkerchief to hand, Arabella wiped at her cheeks again with her fingertips. “It is just-- I grow so impatient sometimes! I wish-- I wish that I knew magic! I wish that I had some power, I wish that I could walk through one of our mirrors and go and find Jonathan and drag him back! But without magic, what good am I to him? What can I do?"

"But you do have magic," Flora answered, staring at Arabella quite gravely.

"What do you mean? That one spell I learned from Childermass? It cannot help me--"

"No, I mean-- Do you not think love is a kind of magic?" Flora asked, her voice soft. "I do. I think there is power in love greater than any magic. Even the magic of the Raven King cannot compare to it. Think of what love makes people do. Think of what it endures. People start wars for love, they kill one another for love, sometimes they kill themselves. They defy dictators and armies for love, they cross oceans and continents for love. And love endures through time and separation, beyond even death. I have given it a lot of thought lately and-- I don't believe there is any magic stronger than simple, human love. The love that you have for Mr. Strange, and the love that he has for you-- Together with his and Mr. Norrell's knowledge and skill, how can it fail to bring him back to you?"

Flora's words astonished Arabella. She had never considered love in such a way before. But wasn't it rather like a force of nature, like a sudden storm that - coming up in the night - levels houses and turns ancient trees to matchsticks? Wasn't it like the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, no more amenable to your control than the steady beat of one's heart or the pulling of breath into one's lungs? Arabella's tears ceased as suddenly as they had begun and she embraced Flora. Here was a species of hope she had not encountered before.

"Thank you," she whispered in the younger woman's ear.

They held each other for awhile and then, releasing Flora, Arabella turned and noticed a little stone bench beside the oak. She gave Flora's hand a little squeeze. "Would you-- would you leave me for a few minutes? I'd just like to sit here for awhile and think about what you said, and listen to the sky lark. Would you mind?"

Flora smiled brightly and shook her head. Gathering up her roses she returned to the house, leaving Arabella alone with the lark.

Tears dangled off Arabella's eyelashes like icicles and she was just about to dab at them with the cuff of her gown when it occurred to her that she might have stowed away a handkerchief in the pocket of the old pinafore she was wearing. She slid her hand into the pocket and was surprised when her fingertips touched something hard.

Something hard and somewhat heavy. Her hand closed around it and Arabella drew the object out, into the sun. It was a small box, a decorative box made of porcelain and painted with enamel in a cheerful, vivid shade of red.

A box shaped like a heart.

Arabella stared at it. She had never seen the box - or anything like it - before in all her life, and yet it seemed oddly familiar. And that was not all. As it sat upon her palm the box felt warm and even seem to pulse slightly, as if--

As if it were full of magic.

Carefully, holding her breath as she did so, Arabella reached out with her other hand and lifted up the little hinged lid of the box. Inside was a small folded square of paper. Setting the box gingerly on her lap she took out the paper and, tear-damp fingers shaking a little, unfolded it. The brushstrokes of the handwriting that covered it, squat and slightly slanting to the right, were instantly familiar.

_My dearest Bell,_

_Once, some years ago at Windsor Castle, I had occasion to do a spell for protection against enchantment. As part of the spell I gave to you my heart. This seemed somewhat superfluous, as my heart was already yours and always had been anyway. Nonetheless, I imagined you slipping my heart into the pocket of your gown. This gown, in fact. The spell endures, for how could it not? My heart will always remain in your keeping. And a good thing too, for how better to send you a message than by way of that part of me you always have, and always will, possess?_

_I am well, my love, and I hope that you are the same. I cannot say where I am, or where I may be going, or how this darkness may be left behind someday. I asked you not to wait for me, not to be a widow, and I hold to that - I want you to be happy, not to pass your days in sadness or in fruitless searching for me in every mirror, in every fall of rain. But, oh Arabella! If there is a way to return to you, I will find it. It may hide from me in some forgotten fairy castle, or in the sand at the bottom of the sea, or at the heart of a burning star on the other side of the sun, but I will find it. And then I will come to you, wherever you may be. For where else could I go but where my heart is?_

_I think of you constantly, my love, and always shall - until we are reunited. Think of me too, but not constantly - fill your mind with other, better things! With beautiful landscapes and blooming flowers and litters of puppies and the laughter of our friends! With everything that has ever brought you joy. Think of me, but forget me - enough to live, Arabella, enough to go on. Just know that_ **I am** _, and that_ **we are** _\- and we always will be, as long as my heart is in your keeping. And that will be forever._

_All my love - Jonathan_

The lark sang and a breeze picked up the scent of the rosebushes and the lavender and honeysuckle leaves. And Arabella felt an odd stirring in her breast, a light and lovely warmth she had not felt for some time.

Yes, wasn't love like that? Every bit as unexpected and strong as a Pillar of Darkness. As enduring as roads and bridges of stone, as unbound as a raven in flight. Surely the bonds of love could stretch between Yorkshire and the Other Lands; surely they were holding fast even now, connecting two people across the chasms of space and time?


End file.
